1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a shell-opening utensil for facilitating the opening and removal of meat from crab bodies, crab legs, and other types of shellfish, and particularly to a shell-opening utensil to sever a shell of a shellfish, extract meat out of an opened shellfish if the meat has not been fully exposed by the severing operation, and to break open areas of the shell which are normally difficult to crack and open, in order to expose the meat for extraction.
2. Description of the Related Art
Crustaceans (e.g., shellfish) such as crabs and lobsters are often prepared for eating by cooking and serving the shellfish while still in a shell. The shell must be removed or broken away from the meat before the meat can be consumed. Boiling or broiling of a shellfish such as a crab, for example, typically does not change characteristics of the shell to an extent that it can be easily broken to access the meat of the crab.
Conventional shell-opening utensils include bifurcated, pivoted handle, nutcracker-type utensils, which have been used to crack the shells of crab legs or other types of shellfish in order to facilitate manual removal of the shellfish meat from the protective shell. However, the nutcracker-type utensils are only useful for opening crab and lobster legs, and do not allow a user to open a body of a crab or a tail of a lobster. Also, the nutcracker-type utensils are relatively expensive, and therefore result in a relatively large cost for restaurants when these nutcracker-type utensils are stolen by customers. Furthermore, the nutcracker-type utensils do not allow the user to easily extract the meat from the shell after it is open. Moreover, the nutcracker-type utensils are not particularly useful in when shells that are somewhat soft, and mere cracking of the shell often does not allow the user to then easily remove meat from the cracked shell, such as with shrimp and prawn. Finally, the nutcracker-type utensils do not provide a mechanism for removing hard-to-access meat, and the user typically needs to use a fork for meat extraction.
Other conventional shell-opening utensils include a combination utensil, such as the invention described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,134,206, include a combination of a crustacean shell breaking tool at one end, and a fork at another end. However, the combination utensil is also limited only to allowing a user to open claws and tails of crustaceans, and do not allow the user to sever a body of a crab. Moreover, the combination utensil has design flaws, as it is difficult to maintain a good grip of the combination utensil as it is used to sever a crab claw, for example.
Further conventional shell-opening utensils include oyster, clam, and mussel openers, also known as “shuckers.” However, shuckers are typically only used to open raw oysters and clams, and are not readily offered to customers to use in a restaurant when they order jambalaya, Cajun seafood boils, or other dishes that serve multiple types of seafood including cooked clams, mussels, and oysters. Also, shuckers are typically made of metal, and are therefore expensive to produce and purchase.
Therefore, there is a need for a single multifunctional shell-opening utensil that allows a user to open multiple types of shellfish in multiple ways, and then extract meat from the opened shellfish.